


xxi; Smoke and Mirrors

by Theo_Thaur



Series: 31 Days of TUA Whump [21]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Allison-centric, Bombing, Gen, One Shot, Teen Years, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27261025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theo_Thaur/pseuds/Theo_Thaur
Summary: Whumptober 2020 submission. No 21. "I DON’T FEEL SO WELL": Chronic Pain, Hypothermia, Infection.-----Recovering from a cold and pnemonia, Allison pushes herself into going out with the others on a dangerous mission. Her pain grows harder to cope with, as the situation escalates.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Ben Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves & The Hargreeves
Series: 31 Days of TUA Whump [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951234
Kudos: 3
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	xxi; Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGERS: suicide bombing, implied/referenced (un-named character) suicide, physical whump, briefly mentioned/joked about Alluther.

_ xxi; Smoke and Mirrors  _

They'd been called into a mission with an unusual task --stop a bombing from taking place. That was all. 

It hadn't felt right. They weren't supposed to be involved in those kinds of situations, the biggest indicator of that to Allison was not their young age --fourteen--, but the perception that this was police business. It wasn't in their wheelhouse to do what professionals in squads did, was it? But there was nothing she could do about it either way. 

They'd trapsed over police lines before and put themselves in the middle of conflict in almost every mission. That was the way the academy functioned. 

Flooding out of two cars, they conferred in a parking lot between where the bomber was stationed in a half-empty office building, and a local café --the target. Allison rubbed her arms, finding the mission suit to not be very insulating or practical. One might assume that Reginald was a man that dealt only in practicalities, but that wasn't true. He'd always had a flair for embellishment, affording Grace a special wardrobe as well as the two female members of the academy different uniforms than the males. Reginald cared about the way in which everything looked. It was a cold day, a thin layer of compacted snow already on the ground. It had been through a freeze-thaw cycle, ridgid and crumbling, as if each snowflake had turned into a thin piece of ice. 

"I say we storm in. I'll tackle the man down before he can do anything," Luther suggested, nodding and looking to the others.

"Who put you in charge? Open the door, I'll throw in a knife, slit his throat. Easy," Diego replied, not one to be outdone. Reginald didn't interfere at all, watching them like it was a social experiment, like they had all the time in the world.

Luther appeared dumbfounded. "Yeah, well, what if it doesn't work?"

Diego snorted. "Why wouldn't it work?"

He held eye contact, "dunno," he answered. "I just don't think it would work." Luther crossed his arms.

Ben butted in before Allison could, "both of you. We're making a lotta assumptions here, just…" he fumbled for words, turning to dad. "What do the police do in this situation?" Reginald arched an eyebrow.

"I'm not concerned with what the police do, and neither should you be, Number Six. There are no police here yet. It is  _ your  _ responsibility. All of you." Allison frowned, both because it wasn't too helpful and because she once again had the nagging feeling, which had started in the car, that they shouldn't be doing this. She'd begun to feel more like that lately, but Allison figured it wasn't fair to wreck the team or sabotage a mission because of her personal frustrations. Things weren't  _ too _ bad. Allison had good moments, like laughing at one of Ben's pranks, or singing one of the few Broadway songs any of them knew with Klaus. She could be happy sometimes, it probably wasn't right to expect everything to be perfect just because she wanted it to be. The imperfection meant she had a goal to work towards.

"If I recall correctly,  _ Allison _ ," Klaus said her name with a special emphasis, smiling a little, "can make people do whatever she wants." Allison nodded, looking to Diego and Luther --they were the people she was most needing to convince. Luther was a sweet guy when you got to know him properly, he was very open to making compromises with her, but this was different. It had to do with earning Reginald's praise. And Diego was himself. "So why don't we make that work?" Klaus was being kind of unusually helpful, but Ben didn't seem surprised. It wasn't in Klaus' general nature to want to help on missions, he'd once been sort of willing to come along and see the city, or distract himself. But more lately he'd just been annoyed and sulked. Allison took a more thorough, appraising look at Klaus. It clicked. His eyes were red and he was sporting a dreamy expression. He was high.

"I think we should let Allison go," Luther agreed, which made Diego roll his eyes.

"Of course you want her t--"

"I think she needs someone to protect her though," Luther added, cutting Diego off without remorse. Diego seemed more interested in that, drawing a knife from his belt, and putting on a more agreeing expression.

"Yeah. Me," Diego said resolutely. Allison was kind of nervous to bring either of them with her, because they both had something to prove and weren't solely interested in keeping her safe. But more importantly, she was stubborn about letting anyone pull her in a direction, the way she'd been told she 'needed' it made the idea presented less appealing.

"You both do realize I've trained with both of you? I can fight."

Diego shrugged. "I mean  _ sure _ , but, can you fight like  _ me? _ Don't think so."

"And you had pneumonia," Ben interrupted, wearing an expression of concern.

"Oh. Yeah. That too," Diego said abruptly. 

"I'm over it," Allison said, shaking her head. 

"Mom said you were  _ almost  _ over it," Diego countered, with such a strong look of certainty that Allison was thrown off, and knew he wasn't making that up. She had come down with bacterial pneumonia during a cold a few days ago, but Allison strongly believed she was on the up and up. The last thing she'd wanted was to stay in bed while everyone else went on a mission, she still needed to prove herself as a worthy asset. Successful people didn't take days off.

"Well I'm here, aren't I? So I must be fine," Allison replied, wearing an equally hard look. 

"I… thought you were  _ fully _ over it," Luther said, confused. His eyes widened. "Wait, is that why we didn't k--" Allison turned her attention to him, frowning deeply. He nodded, glancing over at Reginald and swallowing. "Right." Klaus cackled and Ben shoved him for it. Truthfully, she'd been dealing with her pain for a while. It came out of nowhere a year or so ago, rising and falling. Allison had neglected to tell Reginald at first because she'd believed it would pass, and didn't want to bother him with something trifling. But it never did really pass, days turned into weeks which turned into months. Allison stopped expecting herself to recover, but was left with a different challenge; she didn't know how to admit she'd dealt with pain for so long. What kept her quiet, was the fear of Reginald being disappointed she'd held that secret for so long and caused possible harm. Another small part of her was also predicting that talking about such a long struggle would make her look weak, and change the way Reginald saw her. In the end, it was more comfortable to keep as a secret, because she'd started adapting to the pain. 

The locations varied, so too did the symptoms. Abstract and confusing, she wasn't fully sure how to describe the pain in any concise or collected way. Allison wanted to be able to phrase it in a way that was adult--like, in a way Reginald would understand. Sometimes it was in her ears, a ringing deep in the eardrums, which reminded her of tinnitus from gunshots. It could also be more of an ache, or something that made it difficult to hear, which had in a few isolated situations gotten her a talking to from Reginald because he thought she'd been ignoring him. Allison had been forced to make guesses on what someone had said before, because she didn't want to ask them to repeat themselves. On other days, her breath would be ragged and short, and she'd fight to breathe through her nose, too self-conscious to rasp from her mouth like a dog until someone else started doing it during training. It was hard to say whether the difficulty of breathing led to chest pain, whether it was the other way around, or whether the two were heads on the same beast. She might wake up to a paper-dry throat and mouth, and attempt to slowly drink the water in her glass during breakfast slowly, as to not raise any questions.

These problems left her constantly aching and hurting in ways that felt small, too small to deal with. The symptoms flowed so well into her cold and the pneumonia, that it had really been hard to tell anything had changed --if not for the phlegm that came with her coughs, which had formerly always been painful, but dry. Grace taking care of Allison had given her temporary solace from the pains, but now, as part of her charade of being better, she was off pain medication.

"...Well. Cooties aside, I think you've got a couple fine options to take you up to our friend the bomber and keep you nice and safe," Klaus suggested. Allison frowned, looking around to realize everyone had been looking at her, expecting her to say something, except Luther who just looked embarrassed.

"Not a couple options. Three," Ben stated. "But someone --or some people-- have to go. Now." Allison nodded, making eye contact with Ben.

"Let's go," she agreed, ignoring Diego and Luther.

"Looks like she found someone better," Diego muttered to Luther. Allison didn't have to look over to know Luther was fuming, but they could sort that on their own. In any case, boys could still be annoying and immature, thinking two people couldn't just be friends. "Do you think she has a type for guys that are also her--"

"I can hear you," Allison interjected.

"And I am capable of hearing all of you as well," Reginald said slowly, sounding irritated, which made  _ everyone  _ uncomfortable. Reginald looked like he regretted this little experiment of letting them all conference to deal with a problem --like it didn't usually go this way. 

Allison went with Ben, moving across the parking lot quietly, while the rest of the group watched them. The building was still a block or so away, they could've all gone together, but Reginald _always_ watched the academy from a safe distance. Nobody would say it, but enough time living under that roof made it sort of obvious that Reginald wouldn't want them all in one building that might collapse, worst case scenario. He never put all of his eggs in one basket like that. Snow began to fall again, light flurries blowing in the wind. No telling how long they'd actually last upon impact. Allison shivered. They were mostly quiet together, but not in a super bad way. It was a mutual understanding that they could both behave in certain ways for other people, Allison was more social than Ben and she'd felt exhausted for the last week in particular. Ben was receptive to her mood, and matched it, not acting super brightly. He did, finally, ask something as they approached the office building. It was a few stories, beige bricks stretching upwards. Yellowed lights peaked out dimly from a few of the windows. It wasn't yet nighttime, but the afternoons were growing darker --it was becoming harder and less convenient to look over paperwork in natural light.

"Do you know what you're going to say?" He asked.

"I think so."

A figure moved from inside one of the windows, a story up. They were backlit artificially, the details were hard to make out in the old building, under cold afternoon light. It didn't help that she was so tired, only wanting to get the mission over with. Ben seemed to be much more interested, she glanced over at him when he stopped, because his body went stiff. Allison tried to see what he was seeing. The figure paced the length of a few windows, in a longer room. When they turned, they looked bulkly, but not exactly in the way someone looked bulky in a loose cardigan or with a larger frame. Allison squinted, feeling a strange fluttering in her gut. No, this was different, it wasn't really natural, it was… 

Almost comically, they spoke at the exact same time, looking to each other with matching fear and intensity.

"That's the--," Ben started.

"Is he--," Allison said.

That was all the time both of them needed to decide on a course of action, turning around and beginning to run in the opposite direction from the building. Her adrenaline gave her a small reserve of energy as they fled, clamoring to get as far away from the danger as they possibly could, having no thoughts in that moment but to leave, to get to some feeling of safety, before re-calculating in safety. They ran along the street, and Allison misstepped, her foot sliding on a bit of snow so smooth it may as well have been ice. Her energized mind attempted to keep her going as well as possible, over compensating and throwing herself back too far. Tripping over her feet and skidding against the thin snow, she fell behind Ben, some mixture of panic, doom, and cold making her eyes water, so that she couldn't see well ahead of herself. Adrenaline only got her so far, Allison managed to stand up, doubling over and coughing. Her lungs felt heavy with phlegm but her throat and mouth dry all at once, body suddenly overtaken by a ragged sensation. Ben had just kept running, neither of them focused on the other's relative position, too driven by pain and fear.

A loud noise went off behind their backs, stronger than any gunshot --somehow deeper, and not nearly as sharp. Ben turned back, looking over his shoulder as if he'd seen a ghost.

"Allison!" He yelled, frantically, gesturing at her, looking between her and the building. She never heard it, drawing her hands over her ears, disoriented but just trying to keep pushing forward. The structure of the building cracked, folding under the pressure and sliding down. Glass shattered and all manner of bricks and shards erupted from the source of the explosion, fanning out wildly. A cloud of dust drew up almost instantaneously and no sooner was she pelted with a wave of debris that pushed her off her feet, onto the cold ground below. It had seemed no different in outcome than a solid brick wall falling on her, but then Allison felt a tingling in the bones of her shoulders and the back of her neck, and realized it  _ was  _ different. Bits and pieces of wreckage cut past her mission suit like it was tissue paper, imbedding into her skin. Allison couldn't see more than a few feet around her, but raised her head and tried to look around for Ben, as her ears rang like warning bells and her lungs protested against the air. It was as if the last bit of adrenaline had turned straight into stress, her mind instantly going to the worst as he tried to see Ben. 

Everything about her head felt thick and it was more than just the way her hands were still clapped over her ears, unable to move since the blast. Allison tried to pick herself up, but the debris was too heavy against her, chucks of brick and rebar and anything else --it settled over her like a blanket, each shift giving not a potential way out, but the possibility of a new stabbing pain slipping down through a crack. 

She felt faint, her body pinned against the ice. Each short, small breath froze in her nostrils, sudden and quick and  _ cold _ . Allison began another coughing fit, body shaking with each half-retching, half gasping, hack into dusty air. That was about as much movement as she could possibly afford, her body strained and tired, unable to execute anything more than her own systems forced her to. Was there anyone out there? Her eyes alternated between open, in the dust, and closed, the latter leaving her more senseless and in near dark. A fog had formed over her mind, but her determination remained in some isolated, desperate piece. She needed to keep her strength, to forget the pain just like she'd been doing for the better part of a year.

"I heard a rumor," she started, thrown off by how her voice sounded, ears stuffed and cacophonous, covered and kept warm at the expense of cold fingers. Through all of that, her voice hadn't sounded like her own, but rasping and weak, not the carefully rehearsed confidence that yielded the best chance of being irresistible. Allison cried, but kept going. "...I heard a rumor that  _ I-- _ " but the pain was too immense, a hundred icepicks that set itself into her skull as soon as those words had been uttered. Her own voice took up some space in her scattered eardrums, echoing around her mind and digging into her brain like talons. No longer able to hold her head up, she sunk against the dirty ice, which ran up her collarbone and neck, pressing up on her cheek as everything went numb.


End file.
